


The Undertaker's Apprentice

by DarkAkumaHunter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Retribution, Shinigami, Time Travel, rift in space/time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:07:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3303485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkAkumaHunter/pseuds/DarkAkumaHunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1989. A field trip. A rift spike. Wrong place, wrong time. In the blink of an eye, Harry Potter was gone. </p><p>1870. A boy meets his end and discovers that death is not always the end.</p><p>1981, Undertaker and his watcher, Harrison, are given a mission. Eradicate the one known as Voldemort. </p><p>1991, the two worlds meet for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Die Before You Wake

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the rewrite! I finished two of the chapters yesterday and I'm impatient so here they are (I'll update on FF once it's all done but you guys can have them now) so you can get a feel for the new style and all that jazz.
> 
> FYI I can't write children to save my life so chapters like this are my greatest enemy so sorry if it's weird.
> 
> Follow my new writing [tumblr](http://aj-writes-fic.tumblr.com/) for progress updates and fic chat.

Harry Potter possessed a tremendous amount of luck – the only problem was that it was almost entirely bad luck.

If, as a baby, he had perished in the same attack that stole his parents from the world, people would have mourned – friends and family, not an entire community caught up in grim celebration – but his life, all fifteen short months of it, would have been warm and happy.

He did not die.

If his parents had written a will – or, indeed, as they likely had, given the circumstances, it had been read and carried out – the young infant would never have landed on the doorstep of his mother’s estranged sister, condemning him to a sad and downtrodden childhood. It might have involved a bit of confusion, with one godfather in jail and the other not a ‘safe and viable’ option, but the Potters had had many friends, and Harry could have had a gentle upbringing surrounded by magic and stories of his parents.

His aunt resented him from the moment she laid eyes upon him, an unwelcome reminder of everything she had lost and could never have.

Life in the Dursley household taught Harry many things.

Some were snarled at him in unpleasant voices:

_“Your parents died in a car-crash. Drunk good-for-nothings, the both of them.”_

_“Don’t ask questions.”_

_“You’re only going to school because you have to – if you upstage Dudley, or do anything **freaky** , I’m sure alternate arrangements can be made.”_

Others he learned through observation:

_Everything Dudley did was right, even if that right included beating up a kid who lived two streets over and stealing homework when he couldn’t be bothered doing it himself._

_Talking unless he was directly addressed, especially at home, was a risk with no reward. Talking back only left him with more chores, or more time in his cupboard._

_Aunt Petunia loved the look of roses, but hated looking after them. The first time Harry did this in her stead he came back covered in scratches from the thorns, and she only scoffed and told him he better not have bled on her gardening tools. His well-being was less important than her material possessions._

_He would never be treated in the same way Dudley was. This was both a blessing and a curse._

Although his uncle never came through on his threat to remove him from school, Harry developed somewhat of a reputation for being sickly, for his uncle often locked him away for days at a time if something negative happened to Dudley, or a strange rumour caught his attention. His thin, scrawny stature only encouraged the rumours of his delicate health, and his family did nothing to discourage it.

One way or another, his aunt and uncle had managed to find a way to prevent Harry from attending even a single short outing with his elementary school. Allergies and illness and behavioural issues, small throw-away things that were just enough to prevent staff from pushing the issue but not to raise suspicion.

But then, when Harry was nine, his teacher announced a trip. It was for the upper years, Harry’s class and the one above his, and she said with smiles and soft enthusiasm that it was a special trip. She didn’t go into any of the organisational details, but Harry understood that it was a rare thing for their school, and she would hate to see anyone miss out.

The permission slip and request for parental supervision felt heavy in his bag the whole way home.

His aunt and uncle were visibly torn when he and Dudley arrived home and Dudley exclaimed in a loud voice about the trip. Harry’d watched them enough – seen enough, experienced enough – to know what they were thinking. Dudley seemed excited about the trip, so they had to let him go, but this was one outing they couldn’t get Harry out of without raising suspicion. If Dudley went, Harry had to go as well; if they refused to sign his form, Dudley would have to stay behind.

What did they want more? Harry miserable or Dudley happy?

Dudley always came first. Their choice had been made for them.

**oOoOo**

Despite this being his first trip outside of London in, well, forever, Harry couldn’t find it in himself to be excited about it as anything other than a brief escape. And even then he wasn’t entirely safe.

As soon as the ultimatum had been decided upon, his aunt had signed up to accompany the class to Cardiff. While he was sure part of it was to make sure Dudley didn’t get hurt, he knew she was really there to keep careful watch over his behaviour, like he was going to set fire to the bus or something.

Still, wandering a foreign city _was_ interesting, even if he had to do it with Dudley and his gang of awful friends. Everything smelled and felt and looked different, even when it was all also familiar. With his teacher chatting on and on in a bubbly tone at the front of the group – something about family in the area – it was hard to be completely down about the trip. Even though she did nothing to stop Dudley from picking on him at school, her soft voice had always had a calming effect on Harry. She wasn’t safe, but she was one of the safest places he had.

The other class had split ways with theirs as soon as they arrived, only intending to meet back up at the bus to head to wherever they were spending the night. Now, Harry found his own class splitting off into two groups, to explore different parts of the city. Harry stuck by his teacher, but Dudley wound up in the other group. His aunt’s face tightened in frustration for just long enough for Harry to notice it, before she sided with Dudley.

He imagined if he somehow got himself killed while out from under her supervision his family might well celebrate the news.

Harry drifted a little away from his group as they wandered towards the waterfront. The other kids in his class were all excitable sorts, but Harry couldn’t bring himself to be excited about a bit of water. For all he appreciated the salt in the air and the open spaces, he found himself wary of what snippets of rumour might make their way into his aunt’s ear while she was gone. It was difficult to be excited or, indeed, to even relax.

As he wandered, the air in the Plass began to feel strange. It was heavy, and it tingled, and Harry found it difficult to draw breath. He was trying to get away from it while still staying within sight of the group, but it was everywhere. It wouldn’t leave him alone.

He struggled to gasp in short, shallow breaths. It got harder and harder and the air seemed to press closer and closer until, all of a sudden, Harry felt himself falling. His eyes clenched shut against the wildly unsettling feeling and he curled in on himself, sinking to his knees with his arms wrapped around his stomach.

The crushing feeling vanished all at once, leaving Harry to pitch forward and gasp in desperate, ragged breaths. The air tasted different, wrong, but all Harry cared about in that moment was that he could breathe again at all.

When his breathing calmed, he sat back up and opened his eyes.

He was not at the waterfront.

He was not _anywhere_ that he thought he might have recognised. Nothing looked familiar, not from the trip to Cardiff nor from anywhere in Surrey.

He was in an alleyway, kneeling on cold ground. From his spot he looked out onto the main road and saw cobblestones and horses and everything was loud – there were so many voices calling out over one another, so much motion.

And then there wasn’t.

Then there was only one voice. High and screeching it echoed inside his skull, a slurred flurry of panicked words. Through the sudden and devastating burning pain that radiated from the scar on his forehead, Harry almost thought he could make out some of the words.

_Gone. Gone. All of them. Where? Wrong wrong wrong WRONG WRONG._

The voice screamed, and Harry might have screamed too, but no one paid any attention to a scruffy boy in a dirty alleyway. No one would come to his aid.

**oOoOo**

Three years on – or so he imagined, it was hard to tell without birthdays and school and calendars to measure the passing of time – and Harry was mostly used to the now near-constant stream of verbal abuse that plagued him in a manner only he could hear. He’d heard everything the high snarling voice had to throw at him more than once, and he was now mostly able to simply ignore it as it ranted and raved.

Three years of living on the streets in a world that was not the one he remembered, and Harry still wasn’t sure if it was better or worse than living with his aunt and uncle. There, he’d had a roof over his head and (reluctantly given) clothes, even if they were almost entirely hand-me-downs from his significantly larger cousin. Here, he’d made the acquaintance of several small groups of street kids, had learned how to be autonomous, and no longer had to live in constant fear of punishment from his relatives for things he didn’t do and reasons he didn’t understand.

The clothes that had once drawn him strange looks had gone through so many transformations that they were now patchwork skeletons of what they once were, pieced together with other discarded and scavenged materials to mend holes and make something whole out of whatever remained. He was always colder than he would like to be, but given that his previous warmth had only been from living in the tiny cupboard under the stairs, for now it felt like a fair trade-off for freedom.

The street kids often teased him for the way he spoke, saying he sounded like some nobleman, but also that he used strange words that no one understood. He used them to learn what words to keep from his tongue.

**oOoOo**

Sixteen year old Harry possessed none of the youthful optimism of his twelve year old self.

The streets weren’t kind to anyone. Most of the kids he’d befriended were dead or vanished now – they were a commodity for all sorts of underworld trading, from drug-running to human trafficking – and Harry was only holding on by his teeth.

His glasses had shattered beyond repair over a year ago, and he’d had to go on a lengthy city-wide thieving spree to try and find a pair that worked well enough to replace them. Avoiding the law while half-blind was something he’d rather never do again.

Occasionally, when he could sneak himself somewhere to get cleaned up, he could charm food and coin from widows and old women with a cheeky smile and the careful words the kids had always teased him about. No one liked a street rat who _sounded_ like a street rat, but you could con a little sympathy if you twisted your words and actions just right.

He had learned that too late to help the others, but he also knew it was the law of the streets – yourself above all others.

He still didn’t know if this life was better or worse than his first nine years. They were both suffering, but with his fate held in his own two hands from such a tender age, he couldn’t be sure the ‘freedom’ was worth it. He hadn’t known how to fend for himself at nine, and while he could fight a hell of a lot better now, he still wasn’t sure he was doing anything right.

**oOoOo**

At nineteen, Harry had had enough.

In a strange turn of events, as his mood soured further and further and his will to keep struggling on began to fade, the voice in his head started offering stilted (and terribly unconvincing) encouragements. Instead of the furious anger and disgust it had delivered for the last ten years, it had started to sound almost… frightened.

The first time it happened Harry had laughed until he cried. The voice, that damned voice that had terrorised him ever since he – they – arrived in the 1800s (he’d skimmed a newspaper or two in his time – the font was terrible on his eyes but he could at least parse the numbers), was _scared_. Scared that Harry was losing the will to live.

Maybe he was just crazy.

Maybe he’d been crazy the whole time.

Maybe the voice was the one last piece of his self-preservation instincts trying to keep him chugging along in this terrible, terrible life.

Ten years was a very long time to get good at ignoring the voices in your head.

In the end, the day he died was the same as any other day. Nothing specific had triggered the decision. He’d woken up cold and hungry the same way he had every day for a decade. He’d wandered the streets for a time, stolen a bit of food. Then, during a busy period of traffic, after a carriage brushed just a little too close for comfort, he’d simply… stepped out in front of the next, rapidly approaching one.

They’d had no time to slow down or change course, Harry had no time to second guess his decision, and in a whirlwind of pain, everything ended.


	2. Betrayed Expectations (Life After Death)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, it's a rewritten chapter! (Go reread chapter one or this will make absolutely no sense - but also be gentle, childhood chapters are my worst nightmare and writing it was incredibly painful because I can't write kids like at all.) I just finished these two chapters - I don't know when the next update will be since I'm still in the rewrite process but hey, it's something new, and if you want updates or to chat about whatever I have a writing[ tumblr ](http://aj-writes-fic.tumblr.com)

After throwing himself in front of a swiftly-moving carriage and being brutally trampled underfoot, Harry had had no intention of ever waking up again. To awaken would mean he still yet lived, and that his body would be in untold agony from the pounding of horse hooves and carriage wheels. It would mean his dramatic and public suicide was all for naught, and he’d likely be crippled forevermore.

But that was not what happened.

The fact of his death was not up for debate. There had been noise and pain – momentary – then darkness and a hollow nothingness that he both did and did not truly recall experiencing. Then, sometime later – a second or a week or an eternity, he could not tell – he opened his eyes, and found himself kneeling, pain-free, on an immaculately tiled floor in a cavernous room that bustled with quiet activity.

His mind was blissfully, terrifyingly silent. No one was paying him any attention and his mind was calm for the first time since finding himself in the streets of an unfamiliar London.

Later he would feel embarrassed for giving in to such an emotional display in such a public place, but right then he only felt overwhelmed. Tears welled up in his eyes, blurring his vision worse than normal, and overflowed, splashing warmly upon his torn, ratty trousers and on the black and white tiles beneath him.

He was not lying bloody and in agony in the middle of a London street. He was not bandaged up in any sort of hospital, underworld or high society. The desperate screaming voice in his head was silent and he was not in pain.

He didn’t care if this was Heaven or Hell or even a comatose dream, so long as he never awoke from it.

Eventually the tears dried up. Harry wiped at his flushed cheeks with his sleeve and picked himself up from the floor. Now with a somewhat clearer head, he took another look at his new surroundings. His previous assumption that no one had taken any notice of him was, mortifyingly, incorrect.

There was a man leaning against a pillar off to Harry’s left. He wore glasses and a well-tailored suit, and held an assortment of papers in his grasp. The room was still milling with activity; he alone was still, and he alone had his gaze (eyes an eerie yellow-green) locked on Harry’s miserable form.

When he noticed that he had been seen he smiled. It was professional, business-like, with a hint of something vaguely predatory, and it was not the slightest bit reassuring. For a moment Harry considered fleeing, but he had no idea where he was, and that would only invite danger.

The man stepped away from the pillar and beckoned to Harry with a single finger. Harry glanced around again, helpless, unable to fully quash his flight instinct, but there were too many doors leading to too many places unknown. He swallowed thickly and shuffled his bare feet slowly towards him. The man did not wait; once Harry started moving he turned his back to him, leading the way towards one of the myriad doors – all unlabelled, terrifying in their blank uniformity. He only paused once his hand rested on the handle. He glanced back over his shoulder, and though he spoke no words Harry knew the command was implicit – _hurry up_.

Harry moved mostly on autopilot after that, following the man through more hallways and more doors, all still unlabelled and uniform – a maze he would never find his way out of on his own – until, finally, they came to a stop in front of a door that was _different_. There was a symbol pressed into the wood of the door that Harry could make neither heads nor tails of. The man smiled that unnerving smile once more, knocked harshly several times, and ushered Harry inside without waiting for a response. He did not follow him inside, instead closing the door behind him before Harry had a chance to question it.

The room Harry found himself in was not overly large, but was divided quite jarringly into two separate spaces. One half of the room was bare – the walls pale and empty, the floor the same tiles he’d been walking across through the winding corridors – save for a single chair, which faced the other half of the room. This, in contrast, housed a wall of bookshelves, an elegant desk resting on a monochrome rug, and two silent figures.

Harry started at that, having not realised he wasn’t alone. The man seated behind the desk gestured at the solitary chair. Harry sat.

“What is your name?” the seated man asked. His voice was neither gentle nor demanding.

Harry frowned. It seemed awfully unlikely that this strange group of people had sent out a welcome party for him without knowing a single thing about him. (He didn’t know why they _would_ know either, given he was nothing more than a misplaced street kid of no acclaim who threw himself under a carriage to escape the voice in his head and his miserable lot in life.)

“Harry Potter,” he answered eventually. The last name felt heavy on his tongue – he remembered it only by virtue of it being spat hatefully at him in his mind for ten straight years; he had never said it aloud before. Could not even, technically, be sure if it was actually his.

“Both very common English names,” the man continued, “although Harry not being short for anything is a little strange.” The second man, standing behind and to the right of the seated man, handed him a sheet of paper. “Nevertheless, you should have been reasonably easy to find.” He paused pointedly. “You were not.”

Harry hadn’t the slightest clue what ‘being found’ was supposed to mean. He opened his mouth, perhaps to ask for clarification, perhaps to protest, but a hand silenced him.

“Here.” A piece of paper was thrust towards him, and Harry retrieved it cautiously. His confusion only deepened when he glanced down to see his own face staring back at him.

The writing on the page was cursive, and it took him some time to work through it, but he thought he understood the main points. It listed his full name (was that his middle name? he hadn’t known he’d had one), age, and the exact time and method of his death. There was one line that differed.

**_DOB: Unknown._ **

Harry squinted, moving the page closer and further away in an attempt to make sure he’d read it correctly, before returning his gaze to the two men.

“I… don’t understand.” He shrugged helplessly and handed the page back when it was silently requested.

“Indeed. You are somewhat of an anomaly. Not the first on record, but the first we could actually talk to about it. It will not change your punishment, but it must be investigated. That is why you are here.”

Punishment? Harry mouthed the word in disbelief. Wasn’t he dead? What had he done wrong this time? But years of mistreatment kept the question lodged in his throat.

“Mister Potter, when were you born?”

Harry scratched his elbow nervously. He couldn’t recall a single instance of his birthday being celebrated – unsurprising, in the house he’d grown up in – but he remembered the general sense of _not in the here and now_.

“I don’t know, exactly, but… later. Not yet.” He stumbled over the words, not sure how to explain the feeling, or the crushing weight that had settled over him the first time he saw a newspaper and saw a date that felt so very wrong, but neither man interrupted him. He took a deep breath and continued. “There was a television. More than one but. Well. Dudley had one. But they don’t _exist_.” He trailed off.

“I see. Most curious. I think I understand that part well enough. But there is one other thing, Mister Potter.” The standing man – an assistant perhaps – handed the seated man another piece of paper. “Some… _one_ else perished at the exact same time as you during your little suicide dash.” The way his mouth curled around the second half of the word made it seem as though he was more than a little reluctant to label it a being. It sent an uneasy shiver down Harry’s spine. “Any thoughts on that?”

Immediately Harry thought of the blessed silence in his head, but that was ludicrous. He shook his head in vehement denial. The seated man did not appear convinced.

“The name Tom Marvolo Riddle doesn’t sound familiar at all?”

Harry had sometimes had nightmares that were not his own, but they were always hazy and indistinct. He couldn’t tell if the name was familiar or not, but it filled him with an instinctual dread.

“I don’t know,” he said, surprisingly candid.

“Unfortunate.” The seated man snapped his fingers. “Xavier will show you out.”

The standing man – Xavier – inclined his head in acknowledgement. As he made to cross the room Harry blurted out the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since his arrival.

“I am _dead_ aren’t I?”

Xavier’s face was unreadable, but the seated man smiled, darkly amused.

“Of course. But whoever said death meant you could rest?”

**oOoOo**

Xavier, Harry soon discovered, was not a particularly forthcoming man. He spoke only when spoken to (there were more people in the new corridors they trekked through, and several were of the chatty variety) and sometimes not even then. Harry hadn’t been able to piece together either an appropriate question or the courage to voice it, and so had remained silent behind him, observing the people instead.

Everyone he had seen so far (including the seated man in all his interrogative glory) wore glasses and well-tailored clothing. He might have been convinced this was a uniform if it wasn’t for the fact that, despite those two facts, everyone he saw was wearing different colours and styles (in clothing and glasses alike).

There was one question that ached to be asked, but he was almost afraid of the answer.

_Is everyone here dead?_

If the answer was an affirmation then it begged another question: what did death even mean if you simply continued on? Perhaps this would be better than the previous nineteen years of his existence – it wouldn’t be a difficult feat to accomplish – but what was he to do with himself if death was not, well, _death?_

When Xavier made a sudden stop, Harry almost walked straight into him, locked inside his own mind as he wrestled with the question of his mortality. The door before them had a needle and thread pressed into it, and for once Harry could guess what sort of place he was being led to.

Xavier knocked twice, out of courtesy, and swung the door open. He did not look to see if Harry would follow. After all, he had nowhere else to go.

There was a figure hunched over a table full of material scraps, nearly half a dozen measuring tapes draped over their shoulders for instant access, and it was to them that Xavier spoke.

“Get the boy some glasses would you Valerie? Any old pair of training lenses you have lying about will do – he can get fitted for official trainee glasses later – and find him something to wear. Anything would be better than the rags he has the audacity to call clothing at the moment.” Xavier sent him a particularly judgmental stare before sweeping out of the room without so much as a by-your-leave.

“Um,” Harry mumbled ineloquently into the ensuing silence, shifting uncomfortably beneath Valerie’s laser-focused gaze, “what he said, I guess? Please?”

Valerie rolled her eyes. It looked both long-suffering and amused. They were the same yellow-green colour as every other person Harry had crossed paths with since waking in the building. She dug out a pair of glasses from the mess on her desk, gave them a determined scrub with the edge of her shirt, and held them out towards him.

Harry accepted them with only mild trepidation. He hadn’t worn glasses in several years, since the pair he’d stolen had been stolen in turn by street kids or rats or whatever else roamed the streets of London, and he hadn’t had the wherewithal to scour the city for yet another pair. In all honesty he wasn’t expecting much from them – his old glasses hadn’t seemed quite right either – but when he put them on he was surprised at the sudden clarity of his vision. Everything was sharp and focused and he was pretty sure this was the best he’d ever seen anything in his _life_.

“These are _amazing_ ,” he whispered, voice full of childish awe. “How did you _do_ that? Aren’t they supposed to…” he floundered, having never learnt any technical terms about glasses. “Be different for different people?”

“For humans, sure.” Harry blinked owlishly up at Valerie from behind his new-old glasses. “But everyone here has a very specific visual deficiency.” She tapped the side of her own glasses – fancy, with a flattering lens shape and deep red frames. “Your eyes aren’t bad because they were before – they’re bad because you’re dead.”

Harry really wished people would stop saying stuff like that as though he were supposed to understand it. An inside joke? He didn’t dare ask clarification. While Valerie was notably more talkative than Xavier, she was also elegant and terrifying. He was already halfway convinced that her dark, slender hands could easily deal him some serious damage – with or without a well-placed tailoring pin – and she hadn’t even touched him yet.

“But enough about that,” she continued, uncaring of his introspective and mildly terrified silence. “Xavier was correct – you require new clothing. Come.” Valerie motioned with her hand, but moved faster than Harry could obey, coming up behind him and guiding him along to a hanging mirror. She positioned him in front of it, then, in the blink of an eye, Harry found himself almost entangled in a web of measuring tapes as she made quick but skilled measurements.

Harry had never been measured before for anything, and didn’t know the appropriate etiquette, so simply stood as still as he possibly could and waited for it to be over.

“These are going on file,” Valerie informed when she stepped away from him. “You can’t work in ill-fitting clothes. Until then I’m sure we can make do with something from storage.”

By now Harry was getting used to not knowing what was going on, so he filed away the comment about work as just another mystery that would hopefully soon be solved.

Valerie disappeared into a back room for several minutes. Harry twiddled his thumbs and pointedly stayed exactly where he was, not daring to explore the room in her short absence. When she returned it was with a small pile of clothing in her arms, which she dumped rather unceremoniously onto her worktable.

“These are all roughly your size,” she announced. “You’re not the smallest kid to ever grace these halls, but most of the stuff with your measurements are women’s clothes, so there’s not a lot of these second-hand storage items to pick from.”

Harry’s interactions with wealthy women hadn’t given him any decent indicators of how he should dress, and he didn’t know the first thing about fashion, so he stared somewhat helplessly at the pile before picking out a shirt and a pair of trousers.

Valerie turned her back with an amused huff of laughter when he’d only stared, wide-eyed, in her direction instead of trying them on.

He discarded his ratty old clothes without much remorse, but paused before putting on the shirt. In the mirror his reflection was pale and unkempt, but there were no scars. Over his life Harry’d had many an untreated wound turn into a wicked and ugly scar, but none of them littered his torso now. Even the odd scar on his forehead which his aunt had hated so very much had faded until he could only just make it out, and even then only because he knew it should be there. It didn’t feel like his body anymore.

The moment that thought crossed his mind he hurriedly finished dressing, fingers fumbling the buttons as he went. When he finally had them all done up he stepped back and found Valerie watching him with an unreadable expression.

Whatever she wanted to say, she kept to herself, instead shoving a navy vest into his hands and telling him to put it on. He did so without comment.

The him in the mirror was the best dressed Harry had ever been in his entire life. That truth settled uncomfortably in his chest. To only be gifted nice clothes after his death felt like a mockery, but Valerie was calm and steady and, unless she had a frighteningly superb poker face, was not about to burst into laughter or take the clothes away from him again.

Some of the tension in his body loosened at the realisation.

“You look like a proper young man now.”

Harry grinned helplessly. He was still confused and overwhelmed, but he felt a little lighter now.

“Where am I?” Harry asked, feeling now like he might be ready to at least _hear_ the answer.

Valerie’s smile turned wry. “The European Division of the Worldwide Organisation of Grim Reapers.”

Harry laughed nervously, firmly biting back his immediate queries about skeletons and black cloaks and scythes. He had been wrong. He was definitely not ready for that answer.


End file.
